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Working on the First Coast: Olive My Pickle, and so do they

Will.Dickey@Jacksonville.com--03/15/13--Shai Tzabari, owner of Olive My Pickle, in his booth at the Riverside Arts Market Saturday, March 16, 2013 in Jacksonville, Florida. (The Florida Times-Union, Will Dickey)

Shai and Charlotte Tzabari are in the olive and pickle business. They also sell hummus, grape leaves and a few other items. But they’re also part of the growing number of entrepreneurs whose businesses wouldn’t exist if it were not for the recent explosion of farmers markets.

Operating at a small industrial park on St. Augustine Road, they sell their products out of barrels and under tents from Flagler Beach to Amelia Island.

Shai is 36, Charlotte is 38, they’ve married been 12 years and are the parents of little boys. They started the business 2½ years ago, but began planning it several years before that.

First of all, how’d you come up with the name, Olive My Pickle? Why not Pickle My Olive?

Shai: “Olive” also sounds like “I love” — so it’s a play on words. People love our name.

How many farmers markets do you go to now?

Shai: We just added Beaver Street, so that’s eight. We’ll have a third team working, so we’re looking at about 30 stops a week.

You’re strictly farmers markets?

Shai: We sell in two stores; we vacuum pack the olives.

Charlotte: That took a lot of trial and error. We made some real messes, with everything seeping out.

But no jars? You’re not trying to get into grocery stores?

Charlotte: No, not at all. That’s a different business market.

How did you get started in the food business?

Shai: I grew up in Israel and I spent a lot of time with my grandfather. He never bought little packages of food. There were big pieces of meat cut into kabobs. He pickled okra and roses. There was always a big pot of something on the stove. There were always big jars of food and garlic hanging down. I didn’t think about it. But when I got to the U.S., I started missing it.

Charlotte: We had a small organic farm in Ormond Beach, and that got us into the farmers markets. But we couldn’t make a living at it. It was a nice dream for us, but it didn’t work out. Still there’s just the whole experience of walking through the market, talking to people. It’s just very social.

Shai: With us, you sample it. If you like it, you buy it.

When did the olives and pickles start?

Shai: When at the farmers market, we added some olives. It’s such good nutrition. But it was very small. We had four kinds.

What do you have now?

Shai: Eighteen kinds.

You’ve talked about being local, but the olives aren’t, are they?

Shai: No, the main source is Turkey. But there’s a new farm in DeLeon Springs. They’re just plants now; maybe there will be olives by the end of 2014. He’s designated some for us.

Do you prepare them yourselves?

Shai: We would have to brine those, but ours now come already brined. The only thing we do is stuff blue cheese in some.

But you make the pickles?

Shai: We buy all cucumbers from Florida and Georgia. There’s a couple of guys at the Beaver Street farmers market who call me whenever they’re going to get cucumbers. I always get 10 cases, so they’re less than 24 hours off the vine. We rinse them and put them into the drum for two days or two weeks.

Then they’re ready?

Shai: They need to be refrigerated after that to stop the fermentation.

Of course, most grocery store pickles don’t have to be refrigerated until they’re opened.

Shai: They use vinegar, preservatives, food coloring. They’re dead.

You do lacto-fermentation, rather than using vinegar. What’s that?

Shai: The “lacto” in “lacto-fermentation” comes from “lactobacillus” which is a friendly bacteria that thrives in the salt-water brine pickling process. Also called ‘probiotics” these friendly bacteria are powerful immunity boosters and aid in digestion. Olive My Pickle lacto ferments all of our pickled products — versus canning/cooking or using vinegar or sugar (which are other pickling processes that don’t create the super-healthy probiotics).

Charlotte: There’s no live enzymes in the vinegar pickles. People are realizing how important probiotics are. They even have pills for it. But why not just eat it in food?